The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,83

the young man's unusual profile and demonstrated capabilities; they had wanted him to keep an eye out for him. Even now, Janson was hard put to say whether Fielding had recruited him to Consular Operations or whether he had merely gestured vaguely in that direction and allowed Janson to make the decision that felt right to him. He remembered long conversations about the concept of the "just war," about the interplay of realism and idealism in state-sanctioned violence. In prompting Janson for his views on a wide range of subjects, had the don been merely exercising the young man's analytical skills? Or had the don been subtly redirecting those views, prodding a shattered young man to rededicate his life to the service of his country?

Now Fielding daubed his eyes with a handkerchief, but they still glittered moistly. "He was a great man, Paul. It's unfashionable to use those terms, perhaps, but I've never known anybody like him. My God, the vision, the brilliance, the compassion - there was something absolutely extraordinary about Peter Novak. I always felt I was blessed to know him. I felt our century - this new century - was blessed to contain him!" He pressed his hands to his face briefly. "I'm babbling, I'm becoming an old fool. Oh, Paul, I'm not one given to hero worship. Peter Novak, though - it was as if he belonged to a higher evolutionary plane than the rest of us. Where we humans have been busy tearing one another apart, he seemed to belong to some race that had learned, finally, to reconcile the

brain and the heart, keenness and kindness. He wasn't just a numbers whiz - he understood people, cared for people. I believe the same sixth sense that allowed him to see which way the currency markets would go - to anticipate the tides of human greed - is also what allowed him to see precisely what sort of social interventions would truly matter on this planet. But if you ask why he threw himself at these problems everyone else regarded as hopeless, you have to put reason to one side. Great minds are rare - great hearts rarer still. And this was ultimately a matter of the heart. Philanthropy in its root sense: a kind of love." Now Fielding blew his nose quietly and blinked hard, determined to keep his emotions at bay.

"I owed him everything," Janson said, remembering the dust of Baaqlina.

"As does the world," Fielding said. "That's why I said it cannot be. For my reference was not to fact but to consequence. He must not die. Too much depends upon him. Too many delicate efforts toward peace and stability, all sponsored by him, guided by him, inspired by him. If he perishes, many will perish with him, victims of senseless suffering and slaughter - Kurds, Hutus, Romani, the despised of the world. Christians in Sudan, Muslims in the Philippines, Amerindians in Honduras. Cas-amance separatists in Senegal ... But why even begin a list of the damnes de la terre? Bad things will happen. Many, many bad things. They will have won."

Fielding looked smaller now, not merely older. The vital energy had drained from him.

"Perhaps the game can be played to a draw," Janson said quietly.

A despairing look came over the scholar. "You'll try to tell me that America, in its bumbling way, can pick up the slack. You may even think it is incumbent upon your country to do so. But then the one thing that you Americans have never quite grasped is how very deep anti-Americanism goes. In this post-Cold War era, many people around the world feel that they live under the American economic occupation. You speak of 'globalization' and they hear 'Americanization.' You Americans see televised images of anti-American demonstrations in Malaysia or Indonesia, about protesters in Melbourne or Seattle, hear about a handful of McDonald's being rubbished in France - and you think these are aberrant events. On the contrary. They are harbingers of a storm, the first few spittlelike drops you feel before a cloudburst."

Janson nodded. These were sentiments he had heard before, and recently. "Someone told me that these days, the hostility isn't really about what America does, but about what America is."

"And that is precisely why Peter Novak's role was invaluable, and irreplaceable." Heat entered the don's voice. "He wasn't American, or perceived to be a handmaiden of American interests. Everyone knew that he'd spurned America's advances, that he'd angered its foreign-affairs establishment by steering his